It’s about what people notice. In town governments I’ve heard of cutting popular programs that will provoke an outcry only to get credit for reinstating them, while possibly smuggling through other actions that are necessary but unpopular.
“Everyone has a mass of bad work in him which he will have to work off and get rid of before he can do better– and indeed, the more lasting a man's ultimate good work is, the more sure he is to pass through a time, and perhaps a very long one, in which there seems very little hope for him at all. We must all sow our spiritual wild oats.”
“One of the best descriptions of this political culture came from A.J. Liebling, who called Louisiana "the westernmost of the Arab states" and observed that its politics "is of an intensity and complexity that are matched, in my experience, only in the Republic of Lebanon. Louisiana is part of the Hellenistic—Mediterranean littoral—sensual, seductive, speculative, devious."
In his Essays, Michel de Montaigne had a neighbor whose doctor told him not to eat a certain dish. When Montaigne asked him why he ate it anyway, he said he needed something to curse at.
If Books Could Kill did a podcast on “The Four-Hour Workweek” and pointed out he explains the scam he’s running on his own readers. I guess he figures the smart (?) ones can recreate it and the rest just follow the herd.
The ones I’m talking about were only subtly different, like 22 oz vs 24 oz. To me it was obvious what they were doing, shoppers couldn’t compare same-size units and they could have more freedom with prices.
My local hummus factory puts the product destined for Costco into a different sized tub than the one destined for Walmart. Companies want to make it hard for the consumer to compare.
“A tendency to superstition is of the very essence of humanity and, when we think we have completely extinguished it, we shall find it retreating into the strangest nooks and corners, that it may issue out thence on the first occasion it can do with safety.”